Introduce Yourself : When everything comes to a halt by BlindººCoyote (Drem Bruinsma)

That day you still remember. You were in the studio mounting a new piece of furniture you had been waiting for for months. You wanted to re-organise your work set-up, reconnecting all equipment in a more ergonomical way to improve your workflow. You tightened the last screws and crawled from underneath, when a sudden sharp pain cut through your lower back. Did I force myself, did I make a wrong move, you think. No, I was careful, I did not.

The pain did not go away, and became your everyday unwanted partner. You went to the doctor, got prescription drugs. You went to the hospital, got some tests. Months go by, pain gets fierce. In the middle of the night you are standing in the emergency room and a Peruvian doctor on duty does not trust what she sees and tells you to stay. And then you are sucked into a turmoil of events, all triggered to get to a conclusive diagnosis, while big bags of liquids drip into your veins, and your hospital bed is your new world order and you are attended by doctors and nurses day and night and there is nothing left of your previous life. And when they break the bad news you actually already knew it: that is wasn't anything muscular, that it wasn't kidney stone attacks, but the effects of a metastasis in your lower vertebrae, coming from a tumor in your left lung, all the way down and very rare.

Pain management is priority before treatment so you submit to radiation and get very sick from everything. That hospital bed you live in is being rolled out to do all kinds of scans and you undergo everything in a kind of serene state of mind.

There. At night you do a lot of thinking. Is this final? Will I ever get back to composing and music production? Will I fade slowly in a country still foreign to me, without close friends or family? One thing is clear as water. There is no room for anything else but an intense treatment program, spanning half a year to begin with.

Everything on hold. Lots of mail and junkmail become even more irrelevant. You despise the stupidies on Facebook even more. You try not to blame anybody, or yourself. You know that your life as you know it has ended. You want to be left alone, submerge for a long time, and come out the other end full of strength and inspired, ready to write a new chapter. You know in order to get there you have to be sick, you have to vomit, spending countless nights in cold sweat and soaking wet sheets, you have to take so much medication that your appetite has reduced to nil, your nose has become sensitive to foul smells. The world you see is hostile and ugly.

But this is the unexpected visitor who you didn't want to put up with, who is obstinate and settles in. You'll work him out the door in due time. Working on a plan.

Drem Bruinsma

blindcoyote.bandcamp.com